Gawad Kalinga and the I Love Iloilo Movement partnered with SeaOil for “EntrepreneurShift”  - a conference advocating for a Social Enterprise movement in Iloilo. Subtitled, ‘How Social Enterprise is Changing the World’, it brought together different advocates of social enterprise to share their perspectives and experience  in this field (myself and Reese included :p). The invitation was given out by lead organizer (and Iloilo councilor) Jason Gonzales, a friend whom I last met in the Peace & Equity Foundation Social Enterprise Conference held in November 2011.

The conference was like a reunion of sorts as Reese and I spoke with friends and colleagues Tito Tony Meloto (Gawad Kalinga Founding Father), Mark Lawrence Cruz (Gawad Kalinga), Dylan Wilk (Human Nature), Noreen Bautista (Jacinto Y Lirio), Rico Gonzalez (Managing Director of xchange, as well as a Hapinoy Board Member/Advisor) and Chit Juan (ECHOStore). Rounding up the group was Mark Yu, CFO of sponsoring company SeaOil, himself already getting more and more immersed in the Social Enterprise field.

An interesting factoid was that the venue was held inside an SM Cinema (hence the large backdrop behind the pictures below), and must have accommodated an audience of at least 1,000 Ilonggos – students, government officials, local businessmen and entrepreneurs, academe, and NGO/social enterprise practitioners.

Mark Lawrence Cruz, one of the leaders of Gawad Kalinga, did the honors of hosting the event. He is certainly one of the most passionate advocates of GK, poverty alleviation, nation-building, and social entrepreneurship.

Noreen Bautista, co-founder of Social Enterprise Jacinto Y Lirio, started the series of talks. The main message she shared was this – NOW is the ideal time to be young and to start a social enterprise. This is not only evidenced by the impact that J&L has done through community development and eco-fashion, but also further reinforced by young social entrepreneurs in GK’s Center for Social Innovation. In her talk, she also reminded that we first met when I myself shared about social entrepreneurship in her Ateneo Student Leaders Assembly (ASLA) batch; In a sense, it felt as if things had come full circle, and it was certainly great to see Noreen inspiring the next generation of social entrepreneurs.

Tito Tony Meloto, Founding Father of Gawad Kalinga and national icon delivered the keynote. The visionary TM found himself back home to Iloilo where he has his roots (in fact, the first five minutes of his talk were done in native Ilonggo). He then shared the story, mission, of vision of Gawad Kalinga – on poverty alleviation and nation-building – and how it is now moving from housing/community development into social entrepreneurship. Whereas the first phase of GK focused on providing land for the landless and homes for the homeless, the current phase now focuses on enterprise and livelihood. This has come to life through the Enchanted Farm – a social enterprise incubator / platform – the first site of which is in Angat, Bulacan. I’ve visited it quite a number of times and I must say that exciting times are ahead in this space.

Mark Yu, CFO of Seaoil, then took the stage to deliver his insights on the emerging model that is social enterprise. I like Mark’s framework of how it merges two distinct yet related paradigms – that of Making a Million (Business) and Making a Difference (Philanthropy) – and making it work as a unified whole. True to form, Mark shared a well thought-out perspective , an example of which is how the value chain of customers-employees-suppliers-shareholders-community are reconfigured with the community as the primary stakeholder. Reese and I have known Mark from the Asia Society Philippines21 Young Leaders Network, and I for one am very happy that he is now beginning to apply his mastery of business into this field. (We talked a lot later that day on models and principles in social enterprise, and let me just tell you that it was quite the head-trip :p)

Dylan Wilk, co-founder of Human Nature, was as usual charming and funny, but still very effective in sharing the story of Human Nature, most certainly one of the most successful and scaled-up social enterprises in the Philippines. He started his talk by sharing the story of his transition from one of the richest young men in the UK into being one of GK’s staunches advocates and leaders – living proof that happiness is not always found in material wealth alone. In fact, he not only married to the GK cause, he literally married the daughter of Tito Tony, Anna Meloto-Wilk who is also the other leader of Human Nature (along with Dylan and Camille Meloto). Human Nature’s principles are Pro-Poor, Pro-Environment, and Pro-Philippines, and it is indeed gratifying to see how they are rewriting the rules of business as they further grow.

Reese Fernandez-Ruiz, President of Rags2Riches, talked of R2R, but wove it intricately with her message of interconnectivity – of how the decisions we make inadvertently affect the lives of others. She herself knows this from fact, having been awarded a scholarship by individuals whom she has never even met! That generosity certainly led to her Ateneo education which in turn molded her into the person that she is today. I myself firmly believe her perspective as well (and not only because she’s my wife :p) -

Rico Gonzalez then talked on the topic of navigating the start-up stage of social enterprises. Funnily enough, the topic requested of Rico was ‘avoiding the pitfalls of social enterprise’ – hinting of his pragmatic and well-studied approach to things. (On the side, Rico and I work closely together in Hapinoy, and I must say that his perspective and help has been instrumental in sharpening our thinking and actions). He talked on building business models (check out www.businessmodelgeneration.com) but perhaps the line I take with me from his talk was this – ‘Huwag mong isipin kong mahirap, isipin mo kung mahalaga’ (Don’t ask if it is difficult, ask if it is worth doing).

I then shared on – what else but Hapinoy of course! The organizers wanted me to talk on Innovation in Social Enterprise, and so I touched on how we can imagine and innovate on simple things – Hapinoy+ Stores from the humble sari-sari (sira-sira) store, Rags2Riches’ High-end Eco-Stylish Bags from recycled scrap, and Gawad Kalinga’s revitalized communities from slum communities.

Chit Juan rightfully ended the conference, touching on a lot of key points that all the previous speakers had elucidated on during the day. Chit of course has been one of the pioneers of social entrepreneurship (having gone the transition from being an entrepreneur-leader) – it just really seems that it is in her blood and DNA! Her social enterprise, ECHOStore, has now  diversified into multiple lines – touching on retail, community development, a design lab, and now even ECHO markets. She’s relentless – a true social entrepreneur.

—

To end, I just want to give a heartfelt thanks to the organizers – the hospitality and warmth was just so inexplicably tangible! Jason, Rose, Churchille, Tahani, Joey, Tajen, Frances, Chris … you were such gracious hosts and hostesses – thank you so much and hope to see you in the upcoming Bootcamp in GK’s Enchanted Farm!

Hapinoy speaks of good news once again as it makes the finals of the 2012 Sankalp Awards, the largest Social Enterprise Awards in India. It recognizes some of the most innovative, sustainable and scalable businesses in India and in Southeast Asia.

Hapinoy supports sari-sari storeowners in rural areas through education, personal development programs and other business opportunities. As of 2010, there almost 200 Hapinoy Community Stores and thousands of Suki Stores in Batangas, Bicol, Cavite, Laguna, Quezon, Bondoc Peninsula, Rizal, Bulacan, and Mindoro.

MicroVentures Foundation Chairman and Co-founder Bam Aquino says, “We are so blessed with this international recognition. This nomination will help us bring the Hapinoy Program to the world.”

Last year, the Hapinoy Program was awarded by the United Nations Project Inspire and Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

Hapinoy hopes to add to its roster the Sankalp Award for South East Asia. The Sankalp Awards focuses on 5 high impact sectors in India and South East Asia – Agriculture, Food and Rural Business, Education, Clean Energy, Health, Water & Sanitation and Technology for Development.

Each year, Sankalp receives 100+ nominations from for-profit emerging businesses across the five sectors mentioned. This year, they’ve expanded to South East Asia and Hapinoy is on their list.

“We at Hapinoy are very humbled and honored with this recognition from Sankalp. We look forward to sharing the Hapinoy program as a new way to empower women microentrepreneurs while simultaneously bringing solutions to the base-of-the-pyramid,” explains Mark Ruiz, Managing Director of MicroVentures Inc. and Co-founder of Hapinoy remarks.

Ruiz will be representing Hapinoy during the awarding in Mumbai at the annual Sankalp Summit from April 11-13. The Sankalp Forum is a unique and collaborative platform designed to catalyze impact investments into sustainable and scalable social enterprises globally. Sankalp today is one of the largest gatherings of social entrepreneurs, impact investors, policy makers and other stakeholders.

As the Hapinoy team looks forward with gratitude towards the Sankalp Awards, Hapinoy already shares this achievement to its partners, the Hapinoy nanays and to all Filipinos.

Winners will be announced on April 13, 2012. For more information on Hapinoy, visit www.hapinoy.com

More info here http://blog.sankalpforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/FINALISTS.pdf

I recently gave a talk in TEDx Xavier School;

The conference’s theme was “Innovation Built on Tradition” and as I mulled over it, I of course couldn’t help but relate it to our work in Hapinoy – on how the humble, traditional sari-sari store is slowly but surely being reinvented through our program.

This then totally coincided with a simple yet profoundly powerful idea that Hapinoy is living out – the idea that Small is the New Big*
(*no relation to Seth Godin’s book)

I could write about it, but I realized that it would be infinitely easier to just post the video. Let me know whatchathink :

Co-founder and Managing Director of MicroVentures Inc., Mark Ruiz, shares how he is able to accomplish his day-to-day tasks for their flagship program Hapinoy with the help of the BlackBerry Bold 9900.

When we were starting HAPINOY, there was a proverbial fork-in-the-road – should we register as a for-profit or a non-profit?

At that time, we knew that the social mission was at the heart of the about-to-be-formed company. But we also knew that we wanted the discipline of business to permeate how we would act and decide and grow. This then led to the decision to create MicroVentures Incorporated – a for-profit business that is driven to fundamentally help microentrepreneurs (trivia – the term ‘social enterprise’ was definitely not yet in vogue).

Fast-forward (3) years later, and we realize that the legal framework in the Philippines (and around the world for that matter) is still not ideal for social enterprises. When you register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, you can only register as a for-profit or a non-profit – and swinging either way forces you into a box that unfortunately doesn’t capture the specific needs of SE’s. After all, there is a decidedly for-profit component (all business and commercial-oriented activities) and non-profit aspects as well (capacity-building, advocacy).

While policies and new legal forms are a work-in-progress, a lot of social enterprises are adapting by becoming Hybrid Social Enterprises – two symbiotic and distinct enterprises that support both the mission and the business aspects. This has given birth to our MicroVentures Foundation :

MicroVentures Inc focuses on all for-profit and commercial activities – distribution, marketing research, and activation; while MicroVentures Foundation focuses on training, capacity-building, and advocacy.

Dalian, People’s Republic of China, 12 September 2011 – Five social entrepreneurs from Asia will be awarded by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship as Asian Social Entrepreneurs of the Year 2011. Joining a global network of leading social entrepreneurs from over 50 countries, the founders of these organizations will be actively participating in the Annual Meeting of New Champions on 14-16 September in Dalian, People’s Republic of China.

Demonstrating successful impact in Cambodia, Japan, the Philippines and Pakistan, these social enterprises address healthcare access, clean water supply, the distribution of everyday goods in hard to reach areas, and the nutritional imbalance in underserved communities.

“The selection of winners this year reflects an unprecedented diversity of Asian social enterprises whose work has transformative implications both locally and globally,” says Hilde Schwab, Chairperson and Co-Founder of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. “We see a proliferation of services for low-income consumers such as micro-insurance and micro-enterprise development. We also see a deliberate effort from social enterprises to collaborate more closely with companies to multiply that impact.”

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship is proud to award the following innovators the title of Asia Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2011.

Bam Aquino and Mark Ruiz, Hapinoy (The Philippines)

Hapinoy is improving the viability and efficiency of the more than 10,000 small “mom-and-pop” stores in the Philippines. It provides business coaching, leadership training, and store branding to women small store owners in remote areas. By aggregating demand and delivering supplies directly, Hapinoy benefits store owners with a 5-15% cost savings plus access to a greater variety of goods, including over-the-counter medicines, mosquito nets and pre-paid phone minutes. (http://www.hapinoy.com)

Lo Chay, 1001 fontaines pour demain (Cambodia)

More than 900 million people around the world living in rural areas do not have access to safe drinking water. Using sand filtration and solar-powered water purification technology, 1001 fontaines provides clean, affordable drinking water to over 50,000 people at a price of US $0.01 per litre. To encourage local ownership, village entrepreneurs are trained to sell and distribute the water as well as maintain the water production site. (http://www.1001fontaines.com)

Asher Hasan, Naya Jeevan (Pakistan)

Naya Jeevan partners with companies to roll out emergency health insurance to low-income workers making less than US$ 6 per day. Drivers, cooks, waiters and security guards can be insured at US$ 2.50 per month with a yearly coverage limit of approximately US$ 1,780 – enough for a cardiac bypass surgery. Naya Jeevan also packages the insurance with a variety of services, such as annual medical checks, preventative care workshops, as well as access to a 24-hour medical care and claims assistance hotline. (http://www.njfk.org)

Masa Kogure, Table for Two (TFT) (Japan)

One in seven people suffer from malnutrition, whereas 1.6 billion adults in the world are overweight or have health conditions related to overnutrition. TFT corrects this imbalance by transferring excess calories across the globe from developed countries to developing countries. Corporate cafeterias, university dining halls and public restaurants serve healthy TFT meals, donating US$ 0.20 per meal to purchase free lunches in impoverished primary schools in African villages. (http://www.tablefor2.org)

Notes to Editors

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About the Schwab Foundation

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship was co-founded by Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, and his wife, Hilde. Since its inception in 2000, the Foundation has been identifying the world’s leading social entrepreneurs in over 50 countries around the globe. Social entrepreneurs implement innovative and pragmatic solutions to social problems by tackling the root causes and creating social transformation. Selected social entrepreneurs of the Schwab Foundation network participate in World Economic Forum events, thus providing unique opportunities for them to connect with business, political and media leaders.

http://www.weforum.org/news/asian-social-entrepreneurs-year-2011-awarded-schwab-foundation-social-entrepreneurship

http://hapinoy.com/featured_articles/another_international_win.html

That sounds way too sensationalistic, and it probably is. But the drama of that statement is certainly rooted in truth.

Allow me to explain.

Several years ago, I got enamored with the concept of ‘innovation’.

So much so, in fact, that it became a personal buzzword, advocacy, unifying battle-cry.

I read all the books and delved into all of the websites. Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The Innovator’s Dilemma. Innovation : The Five Disciplines. Closing the Innovation Gap. Innovation to the Core. Open Innovation. Innovation Nation. Innovation X. If the book had the word ‘innovation’ in its title (even the sub-title), it had a 90% chance of ending up on my bookshelf. I would get indoctrinated in the religion of IDEO (the Shopping Cart video and the innovation bibles, The Art of Innovation and The Ten Faces of Innovation).

For a time, some really cool friends and I put up Kolektib – an Innovation Hub in the creative hustle-and-bustle of Cubao X. We did Innovation Workshops internally and externally. It was an exquisitely fun time.

Even social entrepreneurship, for me, was a form of innovation – albeit social innovation. Hapinoy and Rags2Riches are expressions of melding social development with business models, a rather revolutionary approach which would certainly qualify as innovating.

I eventually synthesized my knowledge. I wound up conceptualizing, creating, and teaching a class in Ateneo on Innovation. It would tackle the why’s, the what’s, the how’s of the topic. I wanted to transmit the spirit to a next generation of innovators which would try to conquer and/or change the world.

The one line i always wanted my students to remember : Innovate or Die.

But beginning last year, my innovation lens would slowly shift. Not on a different tangent, but rather on a different depth.

I’m significantly more experienced and quite wiser. For all intents and purposes, I’ve changed. But more importantly, the world has changed at a mind-spinning rate – far outstripping my own evolution.

The first decade of the 21st Century was characterized by dizzying change, hyper-competition, unbridled growth – all of the factors that led to an innovation explosion. Globalization was at full-swing, the Internet began to fulfill its promise of changing everything.

And everything seemed possible. Growth was so palpable and reachable, and so businesses began pouncing on the massiveness of the opportunity. Driven by sheer momentum, they just plowed full steam ahead.

An innovation avalanche would ensue.

Innovation and Design consultancies would have a field day. So many new products, services, processes, and business models would emerge. I should know – it’s what I taught :

How Zara had reinvented the supply chain, allowing them to launch new fashion lines at lightning speed.

How the Wii would tackle the Blue Ocean of game consoles, beating the higher-performing Xbox 360 and Playstations by going on a different tangent and tackling non-gamers.

How Procter & Gamble used Open Innovation and launched connect + develop, unleashing a torrent of growth for their brands under AG Lafley’s watch.

More consumers were opening their wallets, and companies were feasting.

But towards the end of the decade, the world would undergo yet another step-change, perhaps an even larger one than the last.

Crises of global proportions would enter the lexicon.

A financial crisis would infect the world over, leading to national economies teetering on the brink. It was a full-blown meltdown and it washed over countries like a worldwide tsunami.

And speaking of tsunamis, the world became a real-life disaster movie. Environmentalists have been banging the alarm bells on the planet for so long, but it’s certainly only in the past few years that climate change has become real to the person on the street. When Typhoon Ondoy hit the Philippines, it was a shock to the system – it dumped one month’s worth of rain in half a day, causing floods in areas we never imagined were possible.

This climate change crisis is of course linked to to the energy crisis – our over-dependence on carbon-based fuels. Generations ago it wasn’t tangible, but now we see just how finite non-renewable energy is. It’s like we’ve got lung cancer and yet ironically still need two packs of smokes a day just to keep on moving.

And while all this was happening, the gap between the rich and the poor continued to widen. The proportion of the world’s population that survives under $2 a day still goes between a third to one-half of the total human race! (depending on which statistics you look at). Without a doubt, the population and poverty crisis continues to rear its ugly head.

And so in the span of a decade, we went from an age of seemingly unbridled growth … and plummeted into an age of uncertainty. An Age of Massively Complex Problems.

And that’s why a nagging feeling in my gut gradually snowballed, until my lens shifted.

I remember some of the projects that were conceptualized in my Innovation Class. A better kind of toothpaste. Refillable packaging for laundry detergents. Heck, even an innovative cigarette that would light without matches. Of course there were some that were more interesting – especially those who were in the social innovation track.

But with all due respect to my former students, it was the teacher who was at fault. We were thinking too small. We were throwing our energies at the wrong things. (just look at my slides)

Power is useless, if misdirected. Same goes for Innovation.

Innovation is good at tackling any problem, but it can be so much greater if it tackled the right ones.

And so I’m drawing a line on the sand, demarcating where my old thinking ends and my new perspective begins :

The only problems worth solving, worth investing your life in, are meaningful ones.

In an Age of Massively Complex Problems, do we really need to design a better toothbrush?

Do we still want to use innovation to drive unbridled growth and overconsumption, for things that people don’t really need but we’d just want them to buy?

Do we want to continue ransacking the planet with novel products that don’t really add anything extraordinary to people’s lives?

I say, that may have its place in the world, but certainly not in mine.

I will invest my time, my resources, my life, in innovation that, frankly, matters.

Meaningful innovation that adds real value to people’s lives, that tackles real problems plaguing individuals, society, and the world.

A lot of Big Problems. A lot of Big Opportunities. A lot of Big Innovations needed.

I call this new evolution of my definition, Innovation(+). Innovation plus, Innovation positive, Innovation with meaning.

The time has come for us to put collective energies into innovations that can create positive differences in people’s lives, for society, and the world at large.

We need platforms for participation; Heck let’s take it a step further as Platforms for Activation – where people are actively engaged in helping things move not just onwards, but upwards.

And so it’s in these specific challenges that I will be investing my energies on :

1. Social Innovations at the Base-of-the-Pyramid
- How can we co-create business models, products, and services that serve essential needs for those that live under $2/day?
- How can we make the poor active participants and co-creators in the common drive to get them out of poverty?

2. Development of Technologies, Products, and Services that Positively Advance the Human Condition
- How can we create new innovations in education, healthcare, energy, and communications that sustainably serve the needs of this generation and the next?
- How do we use innovation and design thinking to tackle everyday problems of society – traffic gridlock, transportation, crime as some examples? (in fact, IDEO has evolved Design Thinking into tackling Big Problems – just look at Open IDEO).
- How can the Big Brands, Big Products, and Big Services reinvent themselves into positively advancing the human condition?

3. Harnessing the Web for Massive Connection, Collaboration, and Change
- As I mentioned earlier – how do we create Platforms for Activation? I can think of no better example than how Iceland recently engaged its citizens to write the constitution.
- How can we use web to either rebuild or create new institutions? Financial institutions, Educational Institutions, Healthcare Institutions, even Governments?

4. A New Kind of Society
- How do we transition a paradigm shift from the traditional economics of GDP into one that measures happiness and prosperity?
- How do we go from unbridled production-consumption-growth into true, sustainable living?
- How do we balance the currents of globalization, localization, and community?

5. Innovating for The Planet
- There’s just no way getting around tackling the Climate Crisis head-on, it’s quite simply the biggest problem that we as a collective species have to contend with.
- In fact, I love what Al Gore writes in his new book/app ‘Our Choice’. In addressing the Climate Crisis, he wants ‘to make the rescue of civilization the central organizing principle of our politics, economics, and action.’

So there. A new personal roadmap, a clearer direction, a manifesto on where I wish Innovation+ will go. Where it will take us, or where we can drive it towards.

One of my all-time favorite quotes is by technologist Alan Kay – “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Such wise words in an Age of Massively Complex Problems, an age which needs more and more of us to do Innovation(+).